Unable (so far) to secure a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, still-unbowed GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul is staging a counter-convention of his own across the river on the convention’s second day.

The 10-term congressman from Texas still has millions of dollars in campaign contributions to burn and a fervent following, even though he won not a single primary and has amassed only a handful of convention delegates. But he’s booked Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota for a rally on Sept. 2 in the hopes of attracting several thousand followers — and, not incidentally, attention from the 15,000 news media types who will already be in town to cover the big show at the Xcel Energy Center.

Here he is, on Fox News Tuesday, explaining his plans.

In the wake of Vice President Dick Cheney’s under-the-radar fundraising trip to Minnesota on Monday, it’s interesting to speculate about what role he may have in trying to get John McCain elected president. Well, the Politico website has published a piece wallowing in just that kind of speculation. It’s worth a read.

Organizers of the Republican National Convention announced today that the Internet behemoth Google will be the “official innovation provider” of the big show that hits the Xcel Center in St. Paul on Sept. 1-4.

In a video posted both on YouTube (a Google subsidiary) and the convention’s official website, President and CEO Maria Cino said enlisting Google’s various tools will ensure that the four-day nominee coronation will be “the most high-tech savvy in history.” It wilk, she said, bring the convention a “wow factor.”

Details of the partnership with Google are available at the convention’s websute. It’s also been cross-posted over at YouTube.

Barely 12 hours before word began leaking out that John Edwards would fold his presidential campaign this afternoon, he sat in a meeting room at a St. Paul union hall and denied — repeatedly — he planned to do any such thing.

Edwards last night, firing up his troops

Edwards was reacting to the non-stop speculation in recent days that his lackluster showings in the first four Democratic contests would force him to bow out, shortly after his campaign announced that he was canceling appearances today in North Dakota and Alabama. Instead, he was headed for New Orleans, where he launched his campaign more than a year ago, to give a major speech on poverty.

At one point in a brief interview, he dismissed the buzz about him dropping out as “nonsense”

And in a full-throated speech to hundreds of fired-up union members, he left them with the clear impression he was in the race for the long haul.

Click here to hear what the former North Carolina senator had to say last night about quitting his second bid for the presidency:

Ever since St. Paul was awarded this year’s Republican National Convention, political junkies have salivated over the possibility (however remote) that the convention might be more than a televised coronation of a nominee who nailed down the prize months earlier.

That would create a political spectacle not seen in decades: a brokered convention where bare-knuckled brawling, horse-trading and who-knows-what would reign at the Xcel Center for four days in September. This fantasy has been kept alive by the splintering of the GOP’s presidential field, with no clear leader having yet emerged.

How would such a scenario unfold? Real Clear Politics’ Jay Cost has cobbled together a cogent explanation that illustrates how mind-bendingly complicated the party’s delegate selection process is and tosses in some plausible endgames. (The only obvious flaw in the piece is its reference to the convention being held in Minneapolis.) There’ll be more of this kind of ruminating if the GOP presidential field remains so fractured, but this is a good place to start.

So, last week’s joke on the presidential campaign trail was the announcement by Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central’s faux blowhard that he’s running for president in his native South Carolina. Just a joke, right?

Well, NBC handed over a prime chunk of broadcast platform to him Sunday, in the form of a full 15 minutes on “Meet the Press.” More interestingly, the Atlantic Monthly’s Joshua Green, tongue only partly stuck in his cheek, has picked some politicos’ brains and crunched some demographic data to show exactly how Colbert could conceivably end up with as many as a singleconvention delegate.

And as Colbert said Sunday, “if I get a delegate, it will be a brokered convention.”

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 Folks over at Fark.com have been messing around with the Republican National Committee’s logo for next year’s national convention at the Xcel Center in St. Paul. They’ve Photoshopped it up the wazoo and the results probably aren’t much appreciated by the convention’s organizers. Suffice to say, they’re a little more, um, creative than the original. (Hat tip: Minnesota Monitor.)

Officials connected with the Republican National Convention are adding five senior staff members to work on various aspects of the convention, to be held Sept. 1-4, 2008 in St. Paul. Here’s who’s new:

Frank Spicka, director of security. Spicka, a St. Paul native, previously held a senior-level job with the Secret Service.

Mike Miller, director of operations. He will oversee operational aspects of the convention, which includes handling the needs of 15,000 news media representatives. He has been a staff member for 10 GOP conventions, going back to 1972.

Joby Boland, deputy director of operations. From 2000 to 2006 he worked for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert.

Gordon Pennoyer, deputy director of media operations. In 2004, he worked for the Republican National Convention in New York and the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign in New Hampshire.

Anthony Foti, director of external affairs. His responsibilities will include outreach to the business community, federal, state and local government offices, interest groups and members of the public. Foti is a senior policy adviser at Akin, Gump, Strauss Hauer & Feld, a large Washington, D.C.-based law and lobbying firm.

Organizers of next year’s Republican National Convention just unveiled the logo that will serve as the convention’s brand until it’s gaveled to order in St. Paul next Sept. 1. It features (surprise!) an elephant, which has been the party’s symbol since 1874 and, organizers said, will adorn everything from the Xcel Energy Center to t-shirts. In a news release, Convention Chairman Jo Ann Davidson was quoted as saying, “By the time our convention is complete, this emblem - much like our Republican nominee and future President of the United States - will have been seen by millions around the world.”